Beyond disenchantment: the religious face of contemporary S Korea
Seoul will host World Youth Day in August 2027, bringing young Catholics from around the world and the pope to South Korea. A series ahead of the event examines South Korea’s complex religious landscape and the traditions-versus-modernity tensions shaping spiritual life. A 2024 Hankook Research survey found that 51% of South Korea’s 52 million people reported having no religious affiliation.
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South Korea’s religious landscape combines widespread nonaffiliation with a large Christian population, enduring Confucian social influences, continuing shamanic practices and diverse new religious movements. As Seoul prepares to host World Youth Day in August 2027, the country’s religious life reflects both declining participation in organized religion and varied ways people seek spiritual support.
A 2024 Hankook Research survey found that 51% of South Korea’s population of 52 million reported no religious affiliation. A separate Gallup study in 2025 put the share at 76% among people aged 20 to 30—nearly twice the proportion recorded in 2000.
Among those who identify with a religion, Christians make up the largest group, at about 31% of the population: 20% Protestant and 11% Catholic. Buddhists account for 16%, while the remainder includes smaller religious communities and the Muslim community.
The article describes religious practice as often pragmatic: some people consult leaders or practices from more than one tradition when they believe it will help meet their needs. It notes that declining Buddhist identification does not fully capture how people relate to spiritual practices.
Confucianism was the Joseon Dynasty’s state ideology from 1392 to 1910. Although South Korea is not formally a Confucian religious state, Confucian values continue to shape family relationships, attitudes toward authority and society, and the high value placed on education.
The article also describes shamanism as a continuing presence across religious affiliations. Shamans, most of them women known as mudang, are viewed as intermediaries between human and supernatural worlds; their ceremonies and ritual dances feature at local and national events.
South Korea is home to new religious groups that combine elements of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, as well as indigenous churches that incorporate and reinterpret Christian ideas. The article says some of these groups have a strong nationalist character, actively proselytize and demand deep commitment; it estimates that about 1% of the population follows the Christian-influenced indigenous churches it describes.
Some movements have been drawn into political controversy. President Lee Jae-myung’s government has investigated the Shincheonji Church of Jesus and the Unification Church, founded by the late Reverend Moon; the groups have been accused of trying to prevent Lee’s election. Lee’s proposal to dissolve religious organizations that seek to influence politics has prompted debate over constitutionality, while opposition figures have criticized arrests of religious leaders as incompatible with democracy.
The article frames the issue as a tension between freedom of religion, guaranteed by South Korea’s constitution, and public concerns about some new movements’ conduct. It cites Shincheonji’s refusal to halt public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the church became a source of virus spread, as one example.
Catholicism took root in the 18th century through laypeople who encountered Christian ideas in a work by Jesuit Matteo Ricci, and later grew through the witness of Catholics persecuted under the Joseon dynasty. The Church expanded especially in the 1970s and 1980s, when it supported human rights, freedom and democracy during military rule; its share of the population rose from about 1% to 11% over several decades.
South Korea’s Catholic community remains active, but its growth has stalled, and the Church is also contending with young people’s declining participation in religious practice. Seoul is due to host young Catholics from around the world, along with the pope, for World Youth Day in August 2027.
Religious identity persists amid secularization and cultural modernization
The claim that religious identity persists amid secularization and cultural modernization is plausible, but it needs qualification: religion can remain important to personal and social identity even as religious practice, public influence, and the transmission of faith weaken or change. The Catholic sources support that distinction. They do not, however, provide enough evidence to verify specific claims about contemporary South Korea or to explain the country’s particular religious trends.
The International Theological Commission observes that major religious traditions cannot simply be treated as relics of a premodern past. Religious affiliation continues to shape personal identity, social relationships, and people’s pursuit of the common good—even in secularized societies. Religious communities may also serve as mediating institutions between individuals and the state.
That supports the headline’s central idea: modernization does not automatically erase religion. But persistence need not mean that religious life remains as strong or as publicly visible as before. The Pontifical Council for Culture describes a gap that can open between faith professed and faith lived: people may still identify with a religion while giving God little practical importance, participating less in religious life, or feeling less able to express their belonging.
So “religious identity persists” is not the same as “religious practice is thriving.” Identity, belief, community membership, and participation can move in different directions.
A useful Catholic distinction is between secularization and secularism. Secularization can refer to legitimate autonomy for temporal affairs—the proper freedom of civic, scientific, and political life to operate according to their own methods. Secularism, by contrast, treats the world as self-sufficient and God as unnecessary. The Pontifical Council for Culture explicitly warns against confusing the two.
This matters because modernization is not simply a religious threat. John Paul II acknowledged that modern times have brought positive human values, including respect for human rights, democratic procedures, education, health care, and opposition to violence. At the same time, he noted that urbanization and secularized cultural influences can put pressure on traditional societies and weaken the perceived place of religion in public life. His comments concern Oceania, not South Korea, but they illustrate a broader Catholic point: modernization can produce genuine human goods while also challenging inherited religious identities.
Continuing interest in religion does not necessarily mean that people embrace a shared tradition with its beliefs, practices, and obligations. The Pontifical Council for Culture describes forms of contemporary religiosity centered on personal preference: individuals may seek spiritual experience while rejecting historical, communal, or objective claims. It contrasts that “religion of the self” with Christianity, which understands faith as a relationship with God and with others, rooted in the Church’s shared life.
This distinction helps interpret the phrase “religious identity persists.” A society may retain spiritual interests or religious symbols while traditional affiliation and practice decline. Conversely, some people may experience a religious identity more consciously precisely because it is no longer simply inherited or reinforced by the surrounding culture. A scholarly study of American Catholicism, for example, describes Catholic identity becoming more voluntary as older cultural structures weakened. That is a specific American analysis, not evidence about South Korea, but it illustrates one possible effect of modernization.
A central Catholic concern is whether faith is being handed on to the next generation. The Pontifical Council for Culture notes that secularization can make this more difficult through several channels, including family life, schooling, catechesis, and preaching. It describes the weakening of family and social settings that once helped pass on faith and culture.
Thus a religious tradition may remain visible in a country while becoming less secure in the everyday practices and relationships that sustain it. Persistence at the level of identity does not by itself tell us whether younger people are being formed in the faith, whether religious communities are growing, or whether religious convictions shape public and moral life.
Read carefully, the headline offers a useful corrective to the idea that cultural modernization must lead to the disappearance of religion. The Catholic sources support the view that religious traditions can continue shaping identity and community in secularized settings. They also caution against treating visible religious identity as proof that faith is being practiced or transmitted robustly.
The supplied material does not include data about South Korea’s religious demographics, its different religious communities, or how religious identity there relates to changing social attitudes. Those specifics remain unresolved here. The most defensible Catholic reading is therefore a qualified one: modernization may marginalize or transform religious life without eliminating it, and the persistence of identity makes the quality of faith, community, and intergenerational transmission especially important.